Field

Ancient Mediterranean, Jewish

Notes

Teaching and Research Interests:Ra‘anan Boustan is an Associate Professor in the Department of History (fields: Ancient and Jewish history). He is a historian of religion specializing in Jewish culture and society in the ancient Mediterranean world. His research focuses on Jewish literary and material culture in late antiquity (c. 200–800 CE), with special emphasis on how these sources shed light on the dynamic intersections between Judaism and other Mediterranean religious traditions—Greek, Roman, and Christian.

Boustan completed his B.A. in Classics at Brown University in 1994 and received a graduate degree in Classics and Religious Studies from the University of Amsterdam during his stay in the Netherlands as a Fulbright Fellow in 1994–95. In 2004, he completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Religion at Princeton University with a dissertation on the relationship between Jewish mysticism and rabbinic martyrology in the early Byzantine period.

His doctoral work served as the basis for his first book, From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism (Mohr Siebeck, 2005). In addition, Dr. Boustan has co-edited six volumes, most recently Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia (with Martha Himmelfarb and Peter Schäfer) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).

He is currently writing a book entitled The Holy Remains: Tokens of Cult and Kingship between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity, which traces the fate of the ritual vessels from the Jewish Temple after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the meanings that these sacred objects carried in Jewish and Christian memory.

Primary teaching and research interests: Jewish mystical, apocalyptic, magical, and liturgical literatures; Midrash and Hebrew narrative literature; Jewish/Christian relations in late antiquity; martyrdom and religious violence; theory and method in the study of religion.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters (Select)“Jewish Veneration of the ‘Special Dead’ in Late Antiquity and Beyond,” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. Cynthia Hahn and Holger Klein (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, forthcoming).

“Apocalyptic Literature and the Study of Early Jewish Mysticism” (with Patrick G. McCullough), in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2014).

“Mediterranean Jews in a Christianizing Empire” (with Joseph E. Sanzo), in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, ed. Michael Maas (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2014).

“The Contested Reception of the Story of the Ten Martyrs in Medieval Midrash,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion His 70th Birthday, ed. Ra‘anan Boustan et al., 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:369–94.

“Israelite Kingship, Christian Rome, and the Jewish Imperial Imagination: Midrashic Precursors to the Medieval ‘Throne of Solomon,’” in Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity, ed. Natalie Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 167–82, notes 319–24.

“Blood and Atonement in the Pseudo-Clementines and The Story of the Ten Martyrs: The Problem of Selection in the Study of Ancient Judaism and Christianity” (with Annette Yoshiko Reed), Henoch 30.2 (2008): 333–64.

Book ReviewsAndrew S. Jacobs, Christ Circumcised: A Study in Early Christian History and Difference (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81.3 (forthcoming 2013).

Alongside our existing 12 sub-fields, the History Department supports a number of cross-field clusters. The clusters are intended to attract students and faculty to important themes and current in the historical discipline. The clusters will offer new courses, sponsor outside speakers, and convene Department-based workshops and seminars.